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Yeah, with very linear games where the strict narrative is driving the experience it's fine to have immortal NPCs. But I generally hate it when the game just ends because someone died. In many cases I think the only 'game over' state should be the players death. The gameworld should be able to move on, especially in games that are more open-ended.

BTW: making kids immortal is pretty much political correctness to avoid a backlash. I say, either don't have kids in a game or make everything mortal.

In many cases I think the only 'game over' state should be the players death.

I think quests - main and otherwise - should be fail-able (and if you fail a main quest, say by killing a key NPC, that's game over). Which isn't to say that I want raw STALKER's obnoxious "every time I go in this zone I have to save them from the mutants or they go away". But this whole "every task can be done if you just don't die" not only greatly strains credulity, it also eliminates any narrative tension.

FTL was a breath of fresh air to me - that big ol' enemy fleet really is coming.

EDIT: Let me expand on this a little bit. I'm not advocating for stupid near-impossible escort missions with suicidal VIP's. I'm not advocating for sudden death with no warning from an unseen timer. In fact I'm not advocating for anything that simply happens to the player. When I bring up that HL1 example, most people have never seen it. I never saw it in gameplay. You had to try to make it happen, you had to deliberately murder one or more helpful NPC's. That's what I'm talking about. If a player decides to eff around and deliberately screw over a quest by launching a MIRV into a settlement, let them succeed. It's neither necessary nor beneficial to create artificial boundaries to stymie a player who's actively trying to wreck precisely the things you're trying to magically protect.

BTW, another game that handles things "my" way is Dark Messiah, which clearly announces that certain characters in certain situations are fail-states if they die or even become hostile.

Every time I see a game set on a space station/random man-made space construction, I have to wonder who thought it'd be a good idea to bring projectile weapons and laser guns on board. At the very least, it should be incredibly hard to access any of those considering a single unfortunately aimed shot could depressurise the whole enterprise.

Oh, I can suspend my disbelief - large structures with glass window panes, lack of precautions for artificial gravity failures, magic artificial gravity, etc. It's just that every now and then common sense shouldn't also take a holiday while we're at it, you know? Survival in space is far more difficult than it is on Earth (to say the least), so giving that the respect it's due would be nice for the feeling of internal coherency, at least.

Good point; they did have skyscrapers on the ocean floor for some reason. Maybe I'm assuming too much verisimilitude in a sci-fi game about shapeshifting aliens where the protagonist can morph into a coffee mug.

I'm still going to hold my ground that a shout-out to utilitarian design and basic environmental safety would be a welcome part of a game's design, partly because I'm stubborn as all get out and these are just words on the internet, and partly because it'd make for a nice amount of (literal) worldbuilding for any semi-serious video games dealing with settlements created in a hostile environment.

And I'm with you on that. On the bright side, there seems to be a growing trend among developers to pay more attention to actual interior design principles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWXsmnlmADc (a bit too long and sunday-school-ish, but very informative for level designers).

Here's hoping that this will do well enough to warrant a sequel - and I am primarily talking about sales. We aren't getting new Thief and Deus Ex titles anytime soon by the looks of it, and Arkane's own Dishonored 2 didn't do too well sales-wise so far.
If Prey fails, we might have another drought of titles in this veit to look forward to.

I just don't think it looks interesting. I know that's a subjective judgement, but the feeling I most remember from Dishonored (1 or 2) was just being bored. Like, ennui-type bored. There's no pizzazz to any of their stuff, no verve, nothing that really makes it special. This doesn't look particularly different. I would love to be wrong.

This may be me being in my mid-30's and suffering from the same thing that makes people unable to engage with current music unless it's the right kind of retro.

TBH, i think they should really go back to a few, but essential features, instead of all that "You can do this, and that, and this, and then you can do this, and that, and this". I'd rather have some logical, fun features, than that feature overkill nowadays games offer, where i keep thinking "Hm, they only built those in to attract people with a gazllion of features". System Shock 2 already had a lot of features, and those features were all useful, and well thought out. I don't really see that in many of the feature monsters they offer these days.

This may be me being in my mid-30's and suffering from the same thing that makes people unable to engage with current music unless it's the right kind of retro.

Absolutely. I began to realize that i'm just not the target audience for nowadays games stuff anymore a couple of years ago. You gotta accept that. Nowadays crowd rather likes shiny graphics, boom boom sound, and gazillions of gameplay options, which are all very slimmed down, compared to games where you had less, but deeper options. It's all more "flat" now. IMO.

It's the same for the even older generation. I recently played Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. While i like the higher demand, at some point in the game, i simply stood there, unable to know what to do next, because the game didn't give me the slightest hint on what to do next. Already the generation of games i grew up with took you by the hand more than the earlier generation games. Good or bad, i guess it's a matter of balance. Nowadays games take you too much on the hand IMO. You gotta have at least a bit of a demand of learning the games by yourself.

I just don't think it looks interesting. I know that's a subjective judgement, but the feeling I most remember from Dishonored (1 or 2) was just being bored. Like, ennui-type bored. There's no pizzazz to any of their stuff, no verve, nothing that really makes it special. This doesn't look particularly different. I would love to be wrong.

This may be me being in my mid-30's and suffering from the same thing that makes people unable to engage with current music unless it's the right kind of retro.

I'm a year from 30 and feel the same way. This is a game that I should be excited about but I just can't muster the enthusiasm. It just looks like the same tired corridors and cannon fodder I've gone through hundreds of times before with snazzier graphics.

Nioh and Bloodborne proved I can still get excited about / engaged by games, but most new stuff just doesn't appeal.

I'm not excited for this, either, but I paid no mind to either Dishonored game before they came out but enjoyed them greatly once I did.

I enjoyed the first one a lot more, though, partially because it so highly capitalized on the Thief / Deus Ex nostalgia. With the 2nd one (and even the DLC for the first) it was just like, ok... this is fun, but I got my nostalgia fix and am ready for some new ideas now. I don't need more of the same.

Whelp, even when I was a kid I didn't drool or go ga-ga over every video game release. On the other hand, I'm 35 and still enjoy many types of games quite a lot, and unless reviews and general concensus dickslap it to oblivion, I'll give it a try and find my enthusiasm soon enough.